How Twilight is Allowing Women to Fulfill Fantasies of Sexual and Supernatural Empowerment… and Everyone Hates Them for it

There’s a good chance that many of you are here reading this article because you, like everyone else you know, incontestably hate Twilight. Do you ever wish it would just GO AWAY? Are are so sick of hearing about Edward and Jacob, that you want the whole thing to just disappear from existence? Well you are not alone. This article is,in fact, about hating Twilight but the twist is… I don’t hate it. Actually, I sort of like it.

But, I am sure that the odds are in my favour that you probably do hate Twilight, or you are at least annoyed with it in a way that unsettles you. But why? Is it because you don’t think the books are any kind of sterling literature? Is it because Bella Swan isn’t “powerful” enough as a female role model? Is it because you don’t like Kristen Stewart’s ever-glassy visage, or Robert Pattinson’s combination of glittering epidermis and hair gel? Is it a plot hole? Ask yourself right now, is there something about Twilight narrative that you specifically hate?

If the answer runs something to the tune of, “well, I don’t hate it or anything… I simply just don’t want to read or watch the damn thing,” good for you! But another hypothetical, if you’ll humor me: if tomorrow one of your good friends, maybe your partner, or boss, or child walked up to you told you they had read the entire Twilight series and actually really enjoyed it, would you still feel the same way about them? Any chance your respect for them would take a dip, if only marginally? Taking this one step further, is there any other book they could have claimed to have read and enjoyed that would have left the same affect?

I ask because it often looks as though the internet has regressed into a goddamn hunting ground for Twilight fandom. Not only are Twilight hate sites rampant, but Twilight hate memes are some of the most pervasive images circulating on social networking sites daily. People have become eager anti-fans of the series, creating an active subculture that manifests in hateful dialogue and value judgements on a seemingly arbitrary slice of a very large pop culture pie. Instead of putting effort into enjoying their own “things” they spend their time not enjoying Twilight. Loudly.

The majority of these memes fall into a few distinct categories:

1. I hate Bella memes: detailing someones hatred for Kristen Stewart or Bella, or an interchangeable mess of the two; because she isn’t a strong enough role model or she doesn’t react to things in a “proper” way. Usually measures her against other nerd-heroines Katniss, Hermione, or Buffy etc.

2. “Still a better love story than Twilight” memes: People illustrating their knowledge of the romance genre by juxtaposing the tag line against an image of something that either is or isn’t a good “love story”. Examples may be: a photo of a guys right hand, Tom Hanks and Wilson, the movie poster for dumb and dumber, a horse mounting someone etc. The most offensive memes of this category and ones that blend into type 3, implying that love story chosen for pictorial representation is invalid in some way. By choosing Broke Back Mountain as their example, this meme implies both that Twilight is a “worse” love story and that there is something repulsive about BrokeBack Mountain as well.

3. One of the most offensives types is the “Still not as gay as Twilight” meme: If you stumble upon this cache of memes you may think this is a simple case of some ignorant person who doesn’t care about gay rights using the term “gay” as interchangeable with “bad”, but it is actually much worse than that. What is often happening in these memes is the creators are using images of people who are gay, or who are performing acts that could be interpreted as gay, and then adding on the tagline of “still not as gay as Twilight.” So what they mean is in fact, Twilight is bad, therefore gay is bad and in fact Twilight, somehow with it’s heterosexual love triangle is the “gayest,” and therefore the “worst.”

4. The last category of memes don’t have a unifying caption. They instead are memes that include a male figure who, either dumps, beats, or murders his girlfriend/wife/random woman when she mentions she has watched/read/enjoyed Twilight. A disturbing illustration of desire, hyperbolic or not, brings me to the point of this article.

These anti-Twilight memes and Twilight-hate culture on the whole have very little to do with Twilight, and a lot more to do with systemic sexism and rampant misogyny, and the whole mess could use a feminist perspective. I know, I just dropped the S, M and F bomb in one sentence but hear me out here: we live in a culture, that does not want women to embrace their sexuality, and it REALLY doesn’t want them to do it in a “geeky” way. The original phenomenon wrought by the Twilight books was simply a bunch of girls geeking out over a series of books subsequently turned into a successful film series. The story is no different than the phenomenon of, say, people geeking out over Harry Potter or Batman, and their inevitable film series. The only difference being, when it is women who are the distinct majority enjoying themselves, everyone else gets condescending, snarky, or even angry.

If you need proof of this prejudice existing in other fan cultures you can look at any examination of the fake geek girl problem that is supposedly plaguing society right now. For a notably recent example, take a look at the articles about the #1reasonwhy detailing why women are not welcomed in the gaming industry as creators or participants. It’s a long time coming, but it seems people are finally willing to call the lack of female presence in nerd subcultures out for what it is: sexism. Normally this sexism takes place in conversations about a women’s validity as a geek and therefore her exclusion from that culture. Conversely, this sexism in nerd subculture is much more difficult to name when it is directed at a grouping that is almost entirely female, where men may even feel excluded i.e.Twilight.

Let’s go back in time a bit to examine this further. Before the Twilight movies were released the books themselves were extremely popular among young adult (YA) and female readers. Most people at this point had likely never heard of Twilight. This was a time before Twilight was connected with its silver screen players Stewart, Pattinson, or Taylor Lautner, though word of the films’ production were widespread and the pop culture “aura” around it was entirely different. Twilight has been around since 2005 when the book made its debut and immense popularity. People read Twilight in the way they would have read any other YA series that was hot at the moment and visibly loved it, so Meyer continued to write more of the series. These books-turned-films remain popular because people enjoyed reading them. They read them, as I read them: as a consumer ignorant of the cultural impact the books would have, happily indulging in the fantasy/horror/romance narrative in the same way I would indulge in any other piece of pop fiction or television. Women were lining up outside of bookstores, cosplaying as vampires, speculating about the future of the series, which characters would live or die, and what team would win the battle for Bella’s heart. Utterly captivated by the world Meyer had built, these fans (predominantly women) were just geeking out.

Those on the inside of this culture, were also just enjoying reading, something that is unfortunately rare this day in age. For the most part at this point the Twilight culture was unknown and left alone, yet the first movie’s release signaled to the rest of contemporary pop culture that the series — and it’s fans — had successfully arrived. When outsiders looking in saw these large gatherings of Twilight fans outside of theaters, they were spectator to a group enjoyment that didn’t quite synch up, and met the source material with confusion, aggression, and hatred: a large group of females enjoying themselves. So they looked on them with the same hatred normally reserved for girls lining up for Justin Bieber concerts.

Twilight allowed for a entire movement of young women to revel in not only a fantasy world and fandom without fear of exclusion (like say worlds in comic and video game subcultures) and it also allowed them to revel in their sexuality, openly, by fantasizing about the imaginary Edward and Jacob. This reveling only became stronger when those fantasies saw a fleshed out actualization in the performances of Robert Patinson and Taylor Launter. Women everywhere had tiny intertextual nerdgasams upon the realization that Harry Potter’s Cedric Digory would be playing Edward Cullen.

Every action will have an equal and opposite reaction, so the groundswell enjoyment of the Twi-hards was abruptly stomped out by a larger cultural consensus that Twilight’s success indicated the end of times, or something equally as dramatic. This was partly the result of comic and sci-fi conventions being taken over by thousands of adoring fans looking to see whatever Twilight movie actor was there signing autographs. People were pissed off about the ways in which Twilight was somehow ruining their lives, so they started making memes about it.

For myself, the irony often lies in the memes that are confronting Twilight for being sexist itself.

For example, one meme shows a photo of Kristen Stewart and reads, “Women’s rights? lol I need a man to live.” Disregarding the finer details of Bella’s character, her general independence, her lack of desire to get married, her refusal to obey Edward’s constant commands, and her place as the sexual aggressor in her relationship. In the novels, it becomes very clear to a reader that Bella, who is constantly kissed and caressed but never fully satisfied, is motivated to become a vampire in part because of her veritable dripping anticipation to finally get her freak on. It is easy to read these books as a story about a girl who is so horny over the fact that the sexiest man alive wants to be with her for some reason, that she will literarily give her own life to have sex with him. She doesn’t need a man to live, she wants to fuck a man, she wants to marry him, she wants to conquer him, and she wants to become immortal, all within her rights as a woman. The long-awaited build up to any actual sex over the course of the series has, hilariously enough, garnered the series the monicker “abstinence porn,” offering an enjoyment that is arguably more exciting than if the characters were just having sex all along.

The majority of cultural examinations of Twilight seem to be a reaction that simplifies the novels and films by considering them “not feminist enough” to be consumed by supposedly naive young girls. Plenty has been said of the ways in which Twilight is not as feminist as, say, The Hunger Games or Buffy, both of which were pop culture sensations of a similar nature as Twilight that didn’t attract any of the mass hatred possibly, I would argue, because of the gender diversity in the fan base. Memes often frame Bella as a bad female role model, privileging female identification with characters like Buffy as a more positive alternative. You can read more about this here.

The irony I would cite in this beyond what has already been said about this type of meme, is that comparing Buffy and Bella makes very little sense considering that they are constructed for different purposes. Buffy is kind of like Superman: she has this gift, all these powers, she has super strength and a destiny to save the world. This kind of identification is usually a “look up to” connection as opposed to a “I feel so similar to” connection that readers may have with Bella. Bella essentially functions in the same way as a Peter Parker. He is a plain and boring studious type before he is bitten by a spider and granted his powers. Just a normal everyday guy who is granted superpowers. Fans have identified with Bella in the same way. There is a twofold desire that encompasses not only the sexual desire for Edward and Jacob but also the desire for superpowers, to become something, or someone more. Comparing Bella to Buffy to make a point about the degree to which Buffy and her readership are more feminist, virtuous and empowered is akin to a meme juxtaposing Superman and Spiderman and claiming that those who identified with Spiderman are inherently “lesser” men. I suspect that this specific type of meme, comparing female characters is likely often actually created by women attempting to make a point about empowering our gender, but the inadvertent effect involves a backwards girl hate.

Sometimes women do not fit our definition of what female “strength” should look like (especially when that strength often involves merely repurposing a traditionally masculine rhetoric of strength), but that does not make them weak. We see a similar problem in the mass treatment of Kristen Stewart by both fans and anti-fans of Twilight. It became trendy to critique her for the plainness that was so integral to her character in the novels. The cultural opinion surrounding Bella in the narrative is only compounded by the hatred and slut-shaming directed at Stewart in real life, citing her personal affairs, and using a completely unrelated element to admonish the storyline. The open, widespread condemnation the women in these narratives weak, or anti-feminist, or masochist, or submissive signifies to women who identify so strongly with these characters that the same must be true about themselves. Why can’t we look at these issues of female empowerment as a complex system of women who are still having difficulty coming to terms with their roles in their relationships, instead of simply pushing these women out of the feminist “us” camp and into the “them” camp where they will be considered lesser women.

The Twilight-hate culture is fueled from two sides. One side is the meme culture that I have been citing and the second is typified by articles such as this) which have decided to examine the series as an anti-feminist archetype, and seem to only be able to see the narrative through that lens. Instead of examining the way a narrative such as this is empowering for female sexuality, or examining the ways that these female fan communities allow women to express their sexual desires in a way they are not allowed to in day to day life, the anti-Twilight camp focuses entirely on Edward and Bella’s relationship. It simplifies the narrative into a tale of emotional abuse in which Bella is nothing more than a passive onlooker in her own life. Instead of examining Rosalie’s (One of Edward’s sisters) revenge fantasy in which she, as a vampire, goes back and kills a group of men who gang raped her as a human they focus on Edward “wanting to kill” Bella. Instead of examining Jasper’s description of his previous abusive relationship and how he overcame that, critics want to depict Edward as abuser. Instead of examining the ways that Bella outsmarts her supernatural enemies, detractors focus on the ways in which Edward physically saves her. Instead of examining the ways that a new depiction of feminism may be emerging in popular culture many are deeming Twilight as the death of feminism, or as one article put it “The Franchise That Ate Feminism.

I am not trying to argue for extreme literary complexity in any of these works. What I am arguing for is extreme cultural complexity. The simplistic nature you may see in these characters does not mean that our analysis of the series, and therefore its resulting fan culture, should be just as simplistic. Feminism is not dead, this is something I can guarantee you. For years I have been hearing claims that Bridget Jones, or Sex in the City, or Jersey Shore, or a variety of things were to be “the death of feminism.” Saying that Twilight’s anti-feminist nature will confuse our world’s young girls into abusive relationships or unwilling submission is in my opinion a regressive, sexist notion itself. It is implying that the women reading this narrative or any other cannot reason or deduce for themselves the degree to which they identify with any given fiction, nor ideal of sexuality. If young girls want to read Twilight, if they choose to read Twilight, if they choose to enjoy Twilight… and you tell them not to because it’s “wrong”, or you tell them that their enjoyment reflects their own weak intellect — well, that doesn’t bode well for feminism to me.

In my own opinion (key word), the foundation of feminism is this: being able to choose. The core of anti-feminism is, conversely, telling a woman she can’t do something solely because she’s a woman—taking any choice away from her specifically because of her gender… One of the weird things about modern feminism is that some feminists seem to be putting their own limits on women’s choices. That feels backward to me. It’s as if you can’t choose a family on your own terms and still be considered a strong woman. How is that empowering? Are there rules about if, when, and how we love or marry and if, when, and how we have kids? Are there jobs we can and can’t have in order to be a “real” feminist? To me, those limitations seem anti-feminist in basic principle.

Admittedly this isn’t the precise way I would define feminism, but I think what Meyer is saying here is very important. The key being that you don’t tell a “woman she can’t do something solely because she is a women” by placing acceptable “limits on women’s choices.” We need to allow girls and women to choose what they want to enjoy, and we also need to learn not to taint that enjoyment because we feel that women enjoying themselves threatens some higher, reserved ideal of feminism. If there is one thing that I am sure could be the death of feminism: it is us telling young girls that they are not feminists.

I think Twilight is one of the best things to happen to young female sexuality in the same way that I think that Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the best things to happen to adult female sexuality. We live in a culture that is overwhelmingly sex negative, particularly for women. If the only porn that women will consume is “abstinence porn” and its fan fiction, that is okay with me. Who CARES whether or not the writing in these novels meets some arbitrary level of lexical intricacy or allegorical nuance? Young adults are reading, and they’re privy to a literary artifact which offers a safe, enjoyable exploration of their perfectly natural sexual impulses. No one examines male pornography and critiques it for the quality of its “love story” or sentence structure; in the same light women should be able to indulge in media that is just as permissibly “bad.” I am just so so so happy that women are looking their sexual desires in the face and confronting it as a regular component of their lives in society. Bella and Anna are not the categorically defined “kick ass” females that we have BEEN TOLD are good role models. But if they are characters who plenty of women identify with on a mass scale, then we ought not to focus on the lack of empowerment as defined by their contemporaries, and instead recognize that women of our society identify SO strongly with these female characters regardless. Not because every woman who reads Twilight or 50 Shades is a submissive antifeminist who simply wants to be told what to do, but because women are starving for the type of sexual fantasy that men are allowed to indulge in guilt free everyday. What we can glean from this, also, is that the definitions of female empowerment should not be so static or rigidly defined because dominant character aspects in any one popular text. Female empowerment is not measured by a ratio of aggression, independence, intelligence, or even sexuality, or the mere sum of these parts; rather, the empowered feminist-positive ideal is a comprehensive whole built of of these aspects, but with varying degrees as our role models slip and segue through different contextual representations: Buffy and Bella are every bit as ideal because they are constructed so differently for their own respective universe.

Lev Grossman put it much better than I ever could way back in 2008 when he said:

What makes Meyer’s books so distinctive is that they’re about the erotics of abstinence. Their tension comes from prolonged, superhuman acts of self-restraint. There’s a scene midway through Twilight in which, for the first time, Edward leans in close and sniffs the aroma of Bella’s exposed neck. ‘Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet,’ he says. ‘You have a very floral smell, like lavender … or freesia.’ He barely touches her, but there’s more sex in that one paragraph than in all the snogging in Harry Potter. It’s never quite clear whether Edward wants to sleep with Bella or rip her throat out or both, but he wants something, and he wants it bad, and you feel it all the more because he never gets it. That’s the power of the Twilight books: they’re squeaky, geeky clean on the surface, but right below it, they are absolutely, deliciously filthy.

Will we ever be able to return to a state of mind where we see our daughters reading Twilight the same way we would see our daughters reading superhero comics? Will it ever again appear to people as “squeaky geeky clean”?

Let me get one last thing straight: I fucking love memes. I think a well crafted meme is like a work of poetry, when the subtext is strong and the juxtaposition is subtle and surprising. A good meme and the laugh that accompanies it is revitalizing, like a good cup of coffee. But for every well constructed meme there are about 10,000 shitty memes. I would say that all of these memes above are not popular, not “sticky” as Malcolm Gladwell would put it, because of their content being smart or well assembled. They are instead pushed forward and propelled through cyberspace by hatred for a subculture of women. I say, instead of creating and sharing these hate fueled memes about whatever is the current pop culture thing you don’t understand, you instead spend more time creating memes about things you do like: poking fun at the intricacies of your favorite books, TV shows and films that you get, and think harder before laying down an easy critique of cultures you aren’t involved in.
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Emma Vossen is a comics and sexuality scholar currently completing her PhD at the University of Waterloo. Her poetry is published in the upcoming Masked Mosaic anthology of fiction about Canadian comics. When she has time she writes about sex, feminism and comics at www.getsomeactioncomics.com

53 Comments

I’m curious Emma…in the “not as gay as Twilight” meme, is there some recognition there that Twilight is fairly queer friendly? That is…the book’s are really quite enthusiastic about the worth of different lifestyles, which are analogized not all that surreptitiously to queer lifestyles — and there’s quite explicit alternative perverse sexuality, especially in the later books.

Or is the meme just using “gay” purely to mean “bad”? I guess that’s more likely….

I’m glad you brought us back to those years when Twilight was a runaway bestseller among teens, but most adults hadn’t heard of it yet and it hadn’t become “cool” to claim that you hated Twilight (even though you probably never read it). People seem to forget that Twilight received several starred reviews when it was first published. Compared to the mass of other young adult novels, it is better written than many, and certainly more effective at pulling readers in. I agree that it’s misogyny at work when a knee-jerk hostility toward films with young lead protagonists (even Hunger Games, and the upcoming Divergent, are criticized for being unoriginal or unrealistic, because “a female could never win”) manifests, while those same critics never seem to complain about all the superhero movie franchises which are far more unoriginal and unrealistic.

I’m a little torn…. I do feel like it’s worth thinking about, and criticizing, some of the Twilight hate. At the same time…I don’t think it’s really useful or fair to tell people that they shouldn’t publicly express their alienation from a truly gigantic media phenomena. Twilight is really everywhere; people hate it because it’s in their space; they’re being forced to deal with it. I just don’t like telling people that they have to be positive; that the only legitimate reaction to a massive cultural phenomena is acquiescence or silence.

I think it’s perfectly legitimate to hate on the hating memes too; many of them seem stupid and offensive. But the problem is that they’re stupid and offensive, not that they’re negative.

“The story is no different than the phenomenon of, say, people geeking out over Harry Potter or Batman, and their inevitable film series. The only difference being, when it is women who are the distinct majority enjoying themselves, everyone else gets condescending, snarky, or even angry.”

There were Senate hearings in the 50s that led to EC no longer publishing most of its titles. There are hearings and ongoing public worry over violent video games and movies targeted primarily at a male demographic. There was the PMRC in the 80s that took a big exception to heavy metal. And police would raid hard core punk shows that didn’t have a whole lot of girls there. But maybe none of that’s quite as bad as some twits on the internet making silly pictures about Twilight.

I get uncomfortable when we start talking about how narratives stick to the realm of harmless fantasy. Let me start with a quote from you:

Saying that Twilight’s anti-feminist nature will confuse our world’s young girls into abusive relationships or unwilling submission is in my opinion a regressive, sexist notion itself. It is implying that the women reading this narrative or any other cannot reason or deduce for themselves the degree to which they identify with any given fiction, nor ideal of sexuality. If young girls want to read Twilight, if they choose to read Twilight, if they choose to enjoy Twilight… and you tell them not to because it’s “wrong”, or you tell them that their enjoyment reflects their own weak intellect — well, that doesn’t bode well for feminism to me.

Now what you say above seems entirely correct, especially when people pin a one-to-one correlation of Twilight “fandom” to abuse and/or tell women in their life not to read it. You make an excellent case against a number of reductive readings of the work. And I don’t have the background with the series to really engage you at a textual level. But allow me to argue that the narratives that people consume and judge emotionally or personally salient often do inform their everyday life, even if it is at the intelligent and mature critical distance that you posit above. It’s a truism that people use narratives (whether from Derrida or Stephenie Meyer or their mothers) to construct their relationship to their world, particularly when they’re younger. I’m comfortable saying that the more popular exposure a work has (on average!), the shallower its reception. If anything young adult and/or popular literature (H Pots and The Hunger Games included) should be under much closer critical scrutiny than, say, Calvino. The idea that those of us who find the series banal or uninteresting shouldn’t engage it critically is, to me, an anti-critical statement. I know that you’re not asserting this above (you’re clearly making your half of an argument for the series that I’m not properly equipped to respond to), but in my experience I find that the “leave us to it!” cultural stance can be a difficult one to negotiate, and several times it seems that you’re coming fairly close to. You say:

The key being that you don’t tell a “woman she can’t do something solely because she is a women” by placing acceptable “limits on women’s choices.” We need to allow girls and women to choose what they want to enjoy, and we also need to learn not to taint that enjoyment because we feel that women enjoying themselves threatens some higher, reserved ideal of feminism. If there is one thing that I am sure could be the death of feminism: it is us telling young girls that they are not feminists.

I think that if there is a problem here, it comes in the form of the question, “When is the appropriate time to be critical?” Am I allowed to criticize Twilight for what I perceive as its unproductive or anti-feminist elements if I am properly non-reductive about it?

I think you’re onto something here, Noah. I’d like to expans upon it in a slightly different directiuon.

Emma, I do like a great deal of what you say and your analysis of the meme culture surrounding Twilight. By the end of your piece, however, you have left behind almost entirely your defense of the book – and even your more focused criticism of particular attacks on that series. In place of these more substantive critiques, you resolve the entire problem into an attack on negativity and criticism per se, at least when it comes to this franchise.

Take, for instance, your full paragraph directly before the Lev Grossman passage. You begin with an assertion that Twilight is “the best thing to happen to young female sexuality.” This, to begin, takes the focus entirely off the book and puts it entirely onto the reader – a reader who, in this case, seems to be in a no-lose situation.

Why are the books good? Because young adults are *reading them* (your emphasis). Why is it good for female sexuality? Because it is being used erotically by young women, regardless of the nature of that use: “If the only porn that women will consume is __________, that is okay.” Note that in this argument, too, any title can fill the blank. All porn [for women] is good porn [for women], as long as it’s *consumed* porn [by women].

The paragraph continues in this vein. What’s bad about being told that Buffy is a better role model or a genre-fiction heroine is not that these claims are wrong or blinkered (or even sexist), but that these claims should have ever BEEN TOLD. And what makes this character worth reading or liking? Again, it is because women SO strongly like them. (Your caps above.)

By the end, the transfer of heroism is complete. Who cares if Bella acts heroically or not. The real heroic act is my choice to read and love the book, regardless of what anyone says. Bella may not be rebellious, aggressive, or intelligent. (Or she may be; that fact is now beside the point.) The real issue is that that I, the reader, am rebellious, aggressive, and intelligent – free from your guilt, free from your rules, and free from your rigid definitions.

Short version: Twilight may or may not be good, but I am.

Yes, I know that this is not your entire argument. You do make the case that the books are more complex that their critics admit, and you do indicate the unseemly nature of their critical biases. (Although at my college, the only students who care enough about Twilight to hate it are my women students, including my most avid YAL readers.)

@Noah – I WISH that the memes were making reference to an enthusiasm for different lifestyles but when you look at them en masse they are very clearly not only using gay=bad but also taking issue with the type of non-traditional masculinity that is at play, for example sparkling vampires.

I completely agree with you that the problem here is that these memes, and other reactions to the series are “stupid and offensive”, not just negative. I will totally admit I have had lots of very productive conversations with men and women who have read these books and take issue with details of the plot, characters or cultural fallout. I guess the distinction that it is productive to draw is that between hate and criticism. It seems too often that people aren’t looking to act as critics of the series who are examining it as a cultural artifact, they are haters of the series who want to make an implication about how for some reason this series in particular and it’s fan base are personally offensive to them. You see this extreme loathing both on the side of feminists and misogynists. Somehow unified in their hatred of the text. Anyway, so criticism = productive, hate = counter productive. No one has to have a positive response to everything, but they don’t have to take it personally and make it about themselves either.

Peter: I don’t think all porn is good porn as long as it is consumed by women, I think all porn is good porn as long as women feel empowered by it. Twilight and the resulting Fifty shades of Gray phenomenon both led many women to have a literary cultural phenomenon of their own that made them feel empowered and sex positive. I quite like both the Hunger Games and Buffy as well as Twilight but I don’t feel my enjoyment of female protagonists needs to be put into some sort of ranking scale of “empowerment” because the texts are so different.

I do feel that reader empowerment and enjoyment is more important than the individual characteristics of the protagonist in this sort of discussion (not always obviously I am a English major after all) but I don’t feel that this sort of conclusion renders the rest of my argument mute. Like I said, examining this type of scenario is going to require extreme cultural complexity. I’m sure that an analysis that is complex enough will be full of paradoxes and contradictions.

This post was about raising new questions, I don’t think I have any answers here in this short article but I am hoping that through this week long round table discussion of Twilight we can ferret out some new observations about the series and surrounding culture that may have not been fully discussed before because the critical tone tends to focus on the quality of the product as “bad” instead of examining it as well read and loved and therefore worthy of deeper discussion.

Emma…I think the thing is that when there’s something as ubiquitous as Twilight, people feel that it is personal. That is, it’s something they have to deal with, or can’t escape. That’s where a lot of the hate comes from, I think. It’s really not something people can either take or leave; they’re forced to deal with it.

Which isn’t to say that that hate isn’t gendered. I think that there’s some significant portion of the anger and resentement at Twilight which comes from people being forced to deal with young women’s cultural interests in a way that they’re usually only forced to deal with young men’s cultural interests. And I think there’s another portion which is uncomfortable because Twilight is really feminine in its approach and worldview, and that makes a lot of people angry/uncomfortable (even, or sometimes especially, a lot of people who are feminists.)

I guess I’m interested in figuring out where the hate comes from, and even hating on the particular hate if that’s called for, but I’m reluctant to hate on hate per se. I think having a strong reaction to art, even if it’s a strong negative reaction, isn’t necessarily wrong.

Owen A: I think you absolutely are allowed to criticize it as long as those criticism as are you said “non-reductive” and come from the right intentions. Many, many criticisms of the series come from those who haven’t read the books and therefore watched to movies with the intention of coming to a certain perdrawn conclusion. I think there are absolutely many many problematic elements to this book in terms of gender etc. but we should be discussing them in a “on the one hand, on the other hand” sort of way, instead of viewing all 4 books as a long drawn out abusive relationship.

I bet it is all about the sparkly vampires…so that it really means, “not as feminine as twilight,” or maybe more specifically, “not having as feminine men as twilight does.”

I have to say, the sparkly vampires are kind of a summation of what’s great about the series. Turning vampires into elvish pixies; that’s truly bizarre, and borderline perverse in its stubborn, counterintuitive girlyness. I can’t think of another take on vampires that is that downright weird and wrong.

If you like it then who am I to say anything against that. Everyone should enjoy what they like. Personally, I can’t stand Twilight, yet I would never try to hurt someone by making fun of them for liking something like that. I mean, I for example like an anime called “Black Rock Shooter” even though EVERYONE I’ve ever met has stated that it’s a pretty horrible anime. That didn’t matter to me since I really did enjoy certain aspects of it. Again, even though I didn’t like Twilight (Main Reason is because I didn’t like Bella. I think she selfishly uses people), I did like how it made young girls/guys read other forms of literature. I liked the cinematography of the films. I liked that it gave people a community to be apart of. I liked how it made Vampires relevant again. Personally, I can’t understand why someone would hate it since there are so many good things that came from it. A great video that discusses this was done by Maven of the Eventide. http://blip.tv/mavenoftheeventide/vampire-reviews-top-ten-good-things-about-twilight-6410333

My first exposure to Twilight was through my (male) friend that devours most YA books that have anything to do with the supernatural. His verdict was that the relationships were creepy. My older sister is a big fan though but mass produced romance novels are her guilty pleasure. I filed it under Vampire romances like True Blood except more popular and (therefore) maybe not as good. Not something I was inclined to read, I have other guilty pleasures.

But despite my negative impression of the series it was soon pretty obvious to me that it was so hated primarily because women liked it. Bad, unwholesome stuff popular among guys doesn’t get that much hate. I’m not even sure overexposure is to blame because I notice the hatedom and the memes a lot more than anything from the actual fans.

I couldn’t get past the first few pages of book 2 because the writing sucks. Forget the content; it is just plain bad writing. I was amazed (and appalled) that it got published.

Add to this that I found the first book uninteresting and unengaging in pretty much every possible way (which is my own personal reaction to it), and could not relate to any of the characters and did not give a crap about them at any point.

I also know about myself that I do not like and am not generally able to empathize with a character whose entire self revolves around someone else liking them. Yeah, this happens in real life, too, and I can’t relate to it when real people do it, either. It’s unhealthy. I know that I don’t like stories where that kind of character is celebrated and this is presented as romantic. For me, it is not romantic, it is an abusive relationship waiting to happen. This totally read that way to me.

So for me, this book entirely failed.

But books are very subjective; I know people who liked it. I think it is a waste of paper. I do not hate it. I’m glad it got people reading. I just wish they’d go read something better. They are missing out on so much good writing. I also hope no one sees Bella as a good role model and is encouraged to think that her attitude towards Edward is romantic. It’s fine in a “this is just a story” context, but it’s not so good in real life. Seriously, the whole thing read like a Mary Sue fanfic, and I stopped reading those because they suck, too.

“I couldn’t get past the first few pages of book 2 because the writing sucks”

The writing is not great…but it’s not all that bad either, as far as I can tell. Not really any worse than Harry Potter or the Hunger Games, for example. It’s certainly nowhere near as bad as 50 Shades of Grey, which is truly awful.

I mean…the prose is not a draw. It’s not well written. But it’s not worse written than lots of things that people seem to think are more acceptable.

I also think the idea that Bella lives for Edward is essentially the inverse of the truth. My post tomorrow will talk about this some. And I talk about why I don’t think the relationship is abusive here.

When you say, “I couldn’t get past the first few pages of book 2 because the writing sucks. Forget the content; it is just plain bad writing. I was amazed (and appalled) that it got published” could you be more specific? Did she overuse dialog tags? Switch between present and past tense? Violate rules of good grammar? Remember, she didn’t just get published — she got a really big advance, plus multiple starred reviews from Kliatt, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal.

Just last week I was reading a new novel from a NY Times bestselling author and she flagrantly head-hopped (switched point-of-view briefly from the protagonist to another character in a chapter that was otherwise entirely in the protagonist’s pov). Dan Brown’s writing should make you want to stab a dull spoon in your eye. Visit this web page for specific examples: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html

Yet these bestselling authors are allowed to get away with all kinds of bad writing and no one creates angry memes about them. I have to agree with Emma here, the fact that Twilight has been subjected to such overblown levels of criticism (often without any specific details) indicates that it is the subject (romance) and the audience (women) that is considered unintelligent and unworthy.

I do understand the issue of empowerment. But it seems to stand, almost by definition, as an always-open category: it’s big enough to swallow anything and, therefore, renders moot almost skeptical questions about the nature of that empowerment — not to mention questions about the text.

But let me try a different angle, although I can only speak from my own experience. In my classes — and, yes, I’ve taught Twilight and 50 Shades — the people who seem most empowered by trashing and attacking these books are (almost to a person) women.

The men in the room don’t seem to care enough about either to get angry about them (or to love them). They just the books as something different — and, by and large, are willing to accept it. My female students, however, “take a side,” and the naysayers (I feel) experience a certain power in being able to say so forthrightly what they hate.

[N.B.: This outcome is not a pedagogical objective for me — just something that I noticed.]

You nailed it in your title. Twilight is woman-porn. As boring and bewildering and eye-rolling to men as Schwarzenegger/Stallone/ Chuck Norris films probably are to women. That bit in the seconds films where she’s pounding the walls and wailing? Christ!

I’m always a little wary of any text that makes people feel empowered. The feeling of empowerment can translate into something positive, but it can also make us less aware of the ways in which we are not empowered. That said, I haven’t read Twilight so I can’t speak to the sense of empowerment it offers.

I haven’t gotten into Twilight either. I’ve read good stuff by Noah and others (like Emma), and my wife is a somewhat half-assed fan. But I kind of wanted to say that I agree with the critique of critique– people are allowed to hate, and other people are allowed to hate their hate. To be hyperbolic, it seems like Twilight hate is not unlike “hipster” hate– not that either Twilight fans or art students aren’t irritating, but there is a strong case to be made for suspecting the bulk of hatred to be a genderless decadence that underpins homophobia, and is really worth thinking about.

I agree about the link with homophobia…which is perhaps more interesting in that Hunger Games is often seen as the antidote/opposite of Twilight — and Hunger Games flirts pretty hard with borderline homophobic imagery.

@ Peter: Sorry it took me a while to respond I was off to class as well.

I don’t think everyone is going to be empowered by these texts because not everyone is going to enjoy them in the same way. I also think that it has become increasingly difficult to enjoy them because of the preconceived notions we now have surrounding the culture of being a “Twilight Fan”. I also know, as someone who has taken countless literary studies seminars there is a difference between reading something for class, where most people are trying to distance yourself from the text more often than not instead of getting carried away. There is a sort of vulnerability at play when reading science fiction or romance that is caught up in your suspension of disbelief. In the same way you have to basically allow yourself to get caught up in a horror movie to be scared by it, or get pulled in to pornography to be aroused by it, you almost have to let go of something to read a romance novel and be, enchanted by it for a lack of a better term. I’ve always had difficulties with this in the classroom, it is hard to feel the same way about something when you are reading it for the explicit purpose of critique instead of escapism. Obviously I am critiquing and examining the novel now but my original reading was one of escapism and I would say my enjoyment of the movies, which are admittedly a bit silly, is pure indulgence. I think the empowerment comes from that vulnerability and reading of wish fulfillment. All of this to say I don’t think your girls reactions runs counter intuitive to anything I’m saying.

On another note I love that you have taught both Twilight and 50 shades. It is basically my dream class to teach pornography from an unconventional perspective, starting with a variety of “types” of smutty novels to suss out the conventions of the genre and then move into some other texts, 50 shades, Twilight, Lolita, Lost Girls, early Superman, and see how we reevaluate these texts by looking at them through the lens and theory of pornography.

“…women are starving for the type of sexual fantasy that men are allowed to indulge in guilt free everyday.”

Is that really true? I always assumed the hate for Twilight came not from it being female fantasy stuff, but from it being female fantasy stuff that was being enjoyed openly, shamelessly, socially. Meanwhile, every other guy might be looking at porn — actual porn, porn where the girls love you for just existing, not the gender-role-fulfillment dry-hump that is the superhero comic — on his lunchbreak but he still won’t admit it to his friends and he’ll still lose his job if the boss spies it. The kind of internet tough guy who gets most mad at Twilight is probably less mad that girls are getting off, more mad that girls don’t have to hide their material from their parents.

@Bert – Thanks for bringing that angle into it. I didn’t get to say nearly as much about the homophobic aspects of it as I would have liked. I completely agree with the hipster hate example, there is a implicit fear there that seems to represent peoples anger that identifiable gender norms and on top of that “norms” of sexuality are disappearing. People want to be able to decide if you are a man or woman and if you are straight or gay at first glance. I’ve always felt that a lot of the hipster hate was caught up in the ways it is breaking down a lot of these binaries.

As far as homophobia coming into Twilight, I am at a loss for how this happened. I was so shocked encountering the “not as gay as twilight memes”. It came out of left field for myself.

@ D – very interesting points! I think there is a cultural assumption that almost all men (of a certain age culture etc) are watching porn and more importantly that it is normal. Not at work mind you! (That is something that is unique for novels I guess.) But at some point in their day or week etc. My guy friends personally talk about it but obviously that is not representative of everyone. I think age plays into this in a serious way – there is an idea in society that masturbation and pornography are assumed for young boys of a certain age, where as girls are not considered “sexual” in the same way until highschool age … despite the fact that they hit puberty at much younger ages.

I do think you are totally correct that jealousy is a very large factor. In my research I’m often left wondering if the generic typical pornography of today is really exactly what men want, or is it just what is available. Would they like something with more substance, would they like more narrative? I have a bunch of pulp sex novels from the 1950s for men, those don’t really exist in the same way anymore other than in comics and manga.

I don’t think all porn is good porn as long as it is consumed by women, I think all porn is good porn as long as women feel empowered by it.
———————–

But, is something that makes women “feel empowered” automatically good for them?

First, as you noted, it’s not actually making them empowered, just creating that feeling. As if the emotion is to be considered anywhere near as valid as reality.

And, aren’t there tons of pernicious stuff which make people “feel empowered,” but are actually negative, even destructive?

– Joining in prejudice and persecution of a despised Other

– Belonging to a political group, cult, religious sect

– Acting like a sex object, being sexually “available”

– Manipulating and abusing those who are weaker/more naive

– Cocaine

…and there are the countless ways in which people are told they will get all manner of prestige and benefits, whether joining the military, buying lots of stuff, or procreating, which are just cynical ploys to use them, and keep them disempowered.

————————
Twilight and the resulting Fifty shades of Gray phenomenon both led many women to have a literary cultural phenomenon of their own that made them feel empowered and sex positive.
————————-

Ah, those magic “feelings” again!

The first two “Twilight” movies I’ve found pretty harmless, even enjoyable. Can’t testify as to the rest.

As to the “Gray” thing, that women are so into fantasizing about being a manipulated sexual plaything is telling, and depressing.

This “anything that women like gets a gold star…because women like it!” feminism is gigantically dubious. What about all the women who pursue one abusive creep after another, contemptuously reject men who would treat them lovingly? Behave in other self-destructive fashions?

Do you think that anything people like is, therefore, automatically healthy and beneficial?

If anything, this culture is massively aimed at marketing and encouraging people to like stuff that is psychologically, emotionally, and philosophically damaging and self-destructive. From garbage food to violence-glorifying, sexist entertainment, crassly moronic comedy, simplistic ideologies, religion (so overwhelmingly negative in its impact one may as well skip the qualifiers), pernicious politics…

First: Fanny Hill is, indeed, pretty amazing. And as long as you’re going down the 18th century pornography route, I’d also recommend A New Description of Merryland, and the Electrick Eel.

Great article, Emma. It got me rethinking the hows and whys of my own stance on Twilight. I’ve only read the first book, and I was definitely part of the “Bella’s a bad role model” crowd. In my defense, I’d be less likely to use Buffy as a good example, and more likely to turn to the protagonists of, say, a Tamara Peirce novel; part of my annoyance with the book was that it had reached so much acclaim that should have gone to something with a more pro-active lead. But like you point out, that’s me setting up a fixed view of what a properly empowered female lead should look like.

What bothered me more about the book, though, was how quickly Bella jumped into her relationship with Edward; they hadn’t known each other very long at all before it was “And I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.” Granted, that may be teenage girl hyperbole, but it still seems like a bad example to be offering a teenage audience.

On the other hand, I’ve been doing a little research into the original 18th/19th c Gothic recently, and it’s surprising how the Gothic romance of that time mirrors the Twilight phenomenon: dark male leads, links between the erotic and death, and widespread fears that a generation of female readers would be “corrupted.” Or maybe it’s not surprising. Twilight is, after all, basically a Gothic romance, and there’s a reason Bella’s favorite book is Wuthering Heights (see, they’re really *good* notes). The Gothic romances led to a spike in readership despite all criticism to the contrary, and the young ladies of England didn’t uniformly rise up and throw their lives off a Heathcliff, and I doubt Twilight will lead to any worse decisions.

Peter, that anti-Austen article is really funny. I think the tell is this:

“I always found Austen’s female characters one-dimensional and lacking in passion and energy;”

My suspicion is that the “one-dimensional” there means that she feels like a character lacking in passion and energy lacks depth…and of course, looking to Austen for romantic heroines is a sure road to disappointment.

I think comparing Austen to Meyer is kind of confused, not because Austen is a better writer (which of course she is; she’s a better writer than everybody) but because Meyer is really into hyperbolic passion and magic and eternal romance…and Austen isn’t into any of those things. She’s always urging her characters to show a stiff upper lip and be practical and not read too much poetry and don’t indulge in despair.

Admittedly, there are a few hints of social satire in the early part of the first book of Twilight — some of her observations on high school interactions are actually pretty funny. But the book pretty much abandons that setting, and actually spends a certain amount of time arguing that that setting is stupid and irritating and boring and should be abandoned.

Re: Person of Con: I have never thought of Wuthering Heights as a love story. I always thought of Heathcliff and Catherine as two screwed up people inflicting as much of their inner pain on the world around them as they could possibly manage. I mean, Healthcliff seduces Isabella to spite Catherine and then –spoiler alert y’all– HANGS HER DOG. Also, he beats the shit out of her. I mean, those two are terrible people, and they are in so much inner turmoil because of their circumstances (Heathcliff especially) that they feel a need to inflict suffering on everyone they come across. I’ve never thought of Heathcliff as a romantic figure. Just a scary dude. I can’t fathom the people who think he’s a Hot Guy of Literature because I feel like Bronte goes out of her way to make him scary.

Yes, attraction can be “unfathomable”! I remember a couple of lesbian friends delightedly singing along when “Your love is bad for me, that’s why it’s so good” came on the radio. I was flabbergastedly thinking (much younger then!), “But, you’ve both been in dysfunctional relationships, with people who hurt you…and this is good?”

[…] Hooded Utilitarian offers up even more good Twilight related essays, such as this one by Emma Vossen about Twilight hate and why it’s a sy…. She’s a lot more positive about Fifty Shades of Grey than I am (because Fifty Shades is […]

This was so interesting to read! I have read all of the Twilight novels (but haven’t seen all the movies) and while I thought they were dumb and I wish I could unknow the last one, I have always been a bit uncomfortable with the vitriol directed toward them, especially in the memes you mention. And I think your points about why that hate is so strong are really interesting. (I especially don’t like it Kristen Stewart is used, because she’s not actually Bella, and is in fact a hugely successful woman, so!)

Hmm. Are you crazy? bella is not strong. She constantly needs a man to help her out of the shit that she constantly puts herself into. She’s always complaining, “forks is my own personal hell”, etc, bitch, get the fuck over yourself. She treats people like shit because they’re not physically attractive. How the hell is she a good role model? Seriously. Yes it does put feminism back about 100 years. None of the female characters are remotely strong compared to characters from other books. This is a common arguement, but HERMIONE GRANGER. She stands up for herself, she has a personality, she is smart, and she isn’t afraid to tell people off once in a while. Bella, in comparison, whines, is the stereotypcal 40?s housewife, aspires to get married and have sex with the hottest guy in school who treats her like shit, doesn’t speak up for herself, and forgives Edward for every horrible thing he does immediately. Ugh. Edward isn’t the example of the “perfect boyfriend”. If you want a boyfriend like him, go become penpals with a guy from your local prison who will gladly break into your house and watch you sleep. Edward is abusive. In case you didn’t know, physical abuse isn’t the only type of abuse. There can also be emotional, verbal, mental and more. Edward manipulates Bella into marriage by promising sex and turning her into someone more like him. None of the characters have personalities, and overall, the series is completely horrible.

[…] Emma Vossen examines Twilight hate and anti-fans, writing: “People have become eager anti-fans of the series, creating an active subculture that manifests in hateful dialogue and value judgements on a seemingly arbitrary slice of a very large pop culture pie.” […]

I really don’t like the implication all the hate came after movies. Even before that, there were people critisizing the book for it’s characters, romance and writing.

Anubis1

Yes, it is just the fantasy and if readers see that way, that’s fine, but a lot of them don’t andn this is not me making presumptions, many fans truly don’t realize this is not how the life works and would like to have relationship like that.

THIS! The reason I hate Twilight hate – and I found a book bore and a movie bad – is that hate is openly misogynistic slime polluting net everywhere (“beep sex fantasy to beep women/fat houseviwes” because being fat is supposedly bad, especially if fat people have – gasp – romantic or sexual feelings*), mindless odes to body functions and proud lack of knowledge about the vampire folklore and genre (to these twits Stephen King is most Epic writer ever, Dracula walked in the sunlight “unlike these sparkly fairy faggots”) etc.
* Like old people, who are constantly vilified for showing any sexual or romantic feelings, or even blamed for other people´s sexual deeds – “Dirty old this and that” is used, whatever the age of “improperly” sexual person.

Personally. I loved the books, they were very well written and were all around enjoyable. On the other hand I did NOT like the movies. They did not do the books justice in any way. I would have liked the movies if they had the right actors. I would have even been able to look past the fact that Edward sparkled like some glittered covered tooth fairy. The only redeemable character to me was James. They actually did a fairly good job picking James’ coven. I didn’t even really care for Jacob.

“When outsiders looking in saw these large gatherings of Twilight fans outside of theaters, they were spectator to a group enjoyment that didn’t quite synch up, and met the source material with confusion, aggression, and hatred: a large group of females enjoying themselves. So they looked on them with the same hatred normally reserved for girls lining up for Justin Bieber concerts.”

What is there about Twilight in your article that could not also be applied to Justin Bieber? I mean, specific sentences, obviously, but the general thrust of the essay would be the same. It seems hypocritical to defend the fandom of one but not the other.

Sorry for this misunderstanding, I have nothing against Justin Bieber fans! I have almost the exact same feelings about the Biebs or One Direction as I do about Twilight. I think pop groups are one of the few other areas in our society where young women are “allowed” to express their sexuality freely! Which makes them great! I was merely making the association that likely, those who are hating on and policing Twilight fans are probably the same people who would hate on Justin Bieber fans because the female fanaticism makes them uncomfortable. This is part of the problem with the way people perceive female dominated fandoms. Instead of celebrating their devotion the way we would with say a knowledgeable Batman or Star Wars fan, we call them crazy and mock the object of their obsession. A good reversal of this phenomenon would be how My Little Pony FIM is now being noticed for It’s quality due to the fact that men are enjoying watching it. In less words- the cultural assumption is still that if a fandom is mostly women the cultural artifact (Bieber, Twlight, Supernatural, Fifty Shades, One Direction, Froyo, whatEVER) is assumed to be bad, if the fandom is mostly men it is assumed to be of a higher quality. Hope this clears that up!